Valve Cracks Down On Team Fortress 2 Cheaters

Previews

Screenshots

If you’ve made a habit of using external idling programs to generate item drops in Valve’s Team Fortress 2, then the game’s developer has a little news for you: Enjoy it while it lasts (which isn’t much longer).

Valve posted the following message on its blog to inform TF2 cheaters of its new policy:

“Over the next few days we'll be removing all TF2 items that were earned using external idling applications. We're going to adopt a zero tolerance policy for external applications used to manipulate the persistent item system. Due to us not having a policy in place prior to today, this time we're only removing the items earned through cheating the system. Going forward, if we find users using external applications, we'll remove all of their items. If you're interested, only about 4.5 percent of the players in TF2's community will be affected by this cleansing process.”

Valve went on to say that it will be adding new hats to the inventories of the 95.5 percent of rule-following players out there, because that’s just how big Valve’s heart is. The developer also said that it is working on new systems to vary item collection, including trading and “crafting duplicates into desired items.” However, Valve did not say when it plans to implement those systems.

Are you one those 4.5 percent of fiendish idlers out there? What do you think Valve should do to improve the game's items system, assuming you think there's a problem with it?